


Iteration

by BarefootGirl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen, Gender Related, Light Angst, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:58:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarefootGirl/pseuds/BarefootGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This time, it will work.  This time, everyone lives.  This time, there's a happy ending.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Even for the ones who don't think they deserve it.</i>
</p><p>- story is abandoned in frustration, but plotted out for those who Need To Know-</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which 221B Baker street has to deal with the reality of alternate universes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She had failed. That was all she could think, sitting on the low stone wall, a bottle of whiskey within reach but only a few shots gone, as though refusing it were punishment enough. She had failed. They were gone. No, not gone: dead. She would not accept softer terms to hide her culpability.

"I blew it, mes chéris," she told the night. "One job, and I blew it."

One success, three failures, and one... She didn't know what to call the iteration where everything had seemed almost the same, except no-one seemed to care, the bonds dissolving as though they had never been, Watson moving on with life, Holmes never returning, the great duo drifting apart as though they had been nothing more than co-workers. She envied them a little, maybe.

No. She _pitied_ them.

This iteration, she had been on time, had managed to stop the damage, but they had come to blows after, he had stormed out...and then she had heard the single shot, too late, too far away to stop it. A fourth failure.  She began to wonder if anything could stop it, if her one success had fallen apart after she left...

She couldn't go back to check. Only forward, those were the terms of the deal she had made.

It was almost time. She couldn't see the full moon but she could feel it rising, and she braced herself.

Every skip was the same: same takeoff, same landing, same gnawing sensation in her gut. Whatever she ate in each place stayed there, apparently. Booze, too. She wondered, if she picked up a drug habit or disease, would it be stripped from her body, too? If she got pregnant...

Pointless, she could hear Shey grouse. You aren't having sex, or doing drugs, so the question is pointless.

But pointless questions kept her mind from other things, other questions. Like: what about this time? Will I win, or lose?

The moon rose, and she _skipped_.

#

Her stomach ached, her eyes itched, and her knees hurt. But her clothing was unstained, even if the tear at her knee had carried over. She leaned against the wall, and checked the sliver of sky she could see, above the buildings. Night-dark still, but shading toward dawn. She never knew if time reset, or she was thrown back with each skip: she tried not to think of it at all, not now. Not when she needed all her focus.

There were still a crumple of notes in her pocket. She would try to beg a few pounds if she could while she was here, use them up, but for now she was reliant on what had carried with her from the start.

"Good on ya for planning" she said, again, a pat on the back to the woman she had been, who had cleared her daily account into notes, not knowing what that day would bring. Eventually, it would run out; she didn't know what she'd do then.

For now, she pulled herself together, looked as professional as she could manage, and stepped onto the Main Street to hail a passing cabbie.

"Where to, miss?"

The words still made her gut ache. "221 Baker Street, please."

#

The violin mocked him. Nearly everything else he had gotten rid of: cleaned up, packed off, given away. He'd left himself only a violin, a skull, and insomnia that never seemed to get better, relenting only when his body demanded sleep or collapse, shutting down his brain for merciful hours.

To all appearances, he was doing well, eleven months later. Not fine, never fine, not even Harry ever tried to say that, but well. Well-enough, considering. John laughed, a faint exhale of air. Well-enough for a dead man.

It wasn't the loss of Sherlock that had killed him, no matter what the tabloids claimed. It had been the loss of purpose, of meaning. Of adrenaline highs and the sheer pulse-pounding knowledge that he was alive. He had tried other outlets, but they were..tame. Predictable. Dull.

And that found him here. Again. He lifted the pistol, sighted it at the skull, and pulled the trigger. There was an empty click.

"That's one for you then," he said, and lifted the gun again. "And here's one for me."

Another dry click.

It wasn't working tonight. He didn't feel the anticipation, the thrill of fear, the exultation of relief. He felt...dead.

"That's that then. Always said, when a man's tired of Russian roulette, he's tired of life."

The hands that loaded the gun were steady, only the faintest tremor in thumb and wrist. Not enough to perform surgery, but enough for this, one last time.

The sound of the front door buzzer rattled him slightly. The days of late night - no, early morning - calls were long gone. Lestrade did not come by randomly, a cranky, exasperated supplicant. The homeless network no longer lingered outside their door, and those who still cared - Sarah, Harry, even Greg when he could find time- were more intent on getting him out of the flat rather than coming here.

Mycroft never came by. Mycroft did not _dare_.

The buzzer sounded again and then, when he ignored it, the dimmer sound of the bell downstairs. He frowned. Whoever it was, they were waking Mrs Hudson and that was unacceptable. But by the time he'd thought that, and thought to go downstairs and stop them, there was the sound of doors and voices. And then footsteps, on the stair.

#

"I'm so sorry, so sorry to ring you up this late, but Watson isn't answering and I need to get a message though, it's urgent. Important." She couldn't be too late already, that wasn't fair!

The woman who had answered the door was slight, slender, graying and sleepy, wrapped in a dressing gown, but her eyes were kind, and worried, and the appeal to that worry, the painful urgency in her voice, worked despite the hour and irregularity. Perhaps the older woman too had missed the odd-hour comings and goings, the muted excitement of the game afoot. Whatever worked, she no longer cared, so long as it got her inside the flat.

She took the stairs on the fly, stretching her legs against exhaustion, against fear. There had been no gunshot. She still had time.

And the door was open and a figure stood there. Stocky, solid, chin scrubbed with shadow and eyes heavy with exhaustion, cable jumper over jeans he'd clearly never gone to sleep that night. It all rushed through her brain and she pulled up short on the landing.

"Yes. All right. What?"

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set pre-Season Three. Someone in the shadows is manipulating our players...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story got about 3/4 written and then stalled, because I could. Not. Make. The. Ending. Work.
> 
> And now Season 3 has begin and I'm probably never going to make it work. But for those seen or eight of you who are curious, I'm going to post what did get written...

  
John stopped, his irritation fading as he confronted the late night - early morning - visitor on the landing.  The woman in front of him looked as though she'd seen a ghost, he thought, and then winced. She almost had. Yet another ghost to linger in this flat. What had he been thinking, to do that to Mrs. Hudson? But he was too tired to feel more than a twinge of guilt.  
  
"Don't," the woman said.  
  
"Beg pardon?"  
  
"Don't. I know what you were going to do, what you were thinking. Don't."  
  
"Miss, I'm not sure what-" He stopped, shook his head, aware that they had an audience and whatever this was, he didn't want to do it out on the landing. The woman - jeans, a white blouse under her leather jacket, trainers that had seen better days - looked too thin, her face hollowed out, the planes of her face too sharp, the light overhead picking out glints of silver in her chestnut hair. Whatever she meant, or intended, she was no danger to a dead man.  
  
"Won't you come in? It's all right, Mrs. Hudson.  Thank you, and go back to bed, please."  
  
 "Hudson," the woman echoed, following him. "Hudson, this time."  
  
Maybe she was crazy, one of the lingering fans who still haunted Sherlock's path. And yet...  
  
"You need to wait," she said, before he could offer her tea. "I used to have this entire speech, an explanation, but it doesn't matter. I need you to wait. Thirty-six hours. Then...then you can do whatever you need to. Please." She ran out of breath, staring at him intently, enough to make him uncomfortable. More uncomfortable even than the fact that this stranger had somehow known what he meant to do.  
  
He could deny it. But she wasn't accusing, wasn't trying to stop him, only...delay. Would two more days make a difference? "Who are you?"  
  
The question almost seemed to hurt her: dear god was this someone he knew? No, he would have remembered that face, those eyes.  
  
"Giselle," she said, her mouth pulling in what was almost a smile, her pronunciation French, with a softer g. "My name is Giselle. Will you promise? Your word. Thirty-six hours."  
  
"The least I can do, I suppose." He realized that she was still waiting, and nodded once sharply. "My word."  And then, instinctively, he asked, "Tea?"  
  
Her smile bloomed then, wry and familiar, and John wracked his memory, but came up empty again.  
  
"Please," she said.  
  
But when he came back into the lounge to ask if she took sugar, she was gone.

#

  
Giselle watched from the shadows across the street, as dawn touched the rooftops of London. How many nights had she seen that sight, eyes gritty with exhaustion, adrenaline racing in her veins, patience schooled into her bones? Too many to count, too many to remember. But never as alone.  
  
The light in 221B remained on. Occasionally a shadow passed in front of a window, as though someone were pacing restlessly. Giselle bit her lip until she tasted blood, and the scratch in her eyes was eased only slightly by moisture. Eventually, calmed by the knowledge that John Watson had given his word, she curled her lugs under her, shivering in the night air, and fell into a light, restless doze.  
  
Dawn came and went, the street filling briefly with commuters heading to their office hives, then children heading to school, shop workers and live-in nannies crossing paths en route to their destinations. Watson left the flat, heading for work. Another day, another set of responsibilities keeping him grounded, intact. She risked leaving her spot long enough to mingle with the crowds heading into the Tube, quick fingers filching a coin here and there. She had learned from on of the best, back in his day, the same way she'd learned the street cons and how to pick a dozen different locks, never thinking it would become her meal ticket.  
  
Once she had enough, she bought a bap and coffee, and a newspaper, and returned to her post. She didn't bother to read the paper; she didn't care what happened here, couldn't afford to care. It was camouflage, just a woman taking advantage of the sunlight to read the afternoon paper, and soak up some sun.  
  
And when night fell again, the paper made faint insulation from the cold of the pavement, when she curled up to wait.

 

#

  
Night fell, and she still waited.  “Tonight please, you bastard. It’s supposed to bucket down tomorrow, and I hate waiting in the rain."  
  
But he didn't come that night, the street empty once the weather changed, through the dreary grey morning. She waited, unable to slip away even for a moment, hoping that no-one would notice her, huddled under a shadowed overhang, yesterday’s sandwich siggy and inedible in her pocket.

Watson returned home from work mid-afternoon, and she forced herself to alertness, aware that missing her cue would be disastrous.  Dusk fell, then darkness, and an hour later, slipping throughout the damp came a lighter shadow among darker ones, shoulders hunched, collar turned up.

She slipped away from the overhang she had claimed, her jacket and jeans soaked through despite it, and moved quietly toward the shadow standing just beyond the door to 221 Baker.  
  
But not quietly enough. She stopped when he held up a hand, his body language imperious even in the rain. Giselle swallowed, making certain that she was still out of range; occasionally he reacted physically, violently.  
  
"I have no cash on me, nothing of value to you, and I am in no mood to teach you a lesson in choosing more suitable targets. Go elsewhere."  
  
His tone, haughty and arrogant, almost made almost laugh in relief, but the tremor underneath all that, the uncertain shakiness most would overlook, kept her still and saddened. But he was here, he was  _listening_ , or at least not reacting...yet.  
  
"Go on," she said. She had never bothered with a speech, not with Holmes. Bluntness would win the day here, she hoped, shock him into motion. "Go in. Now."  
  
"I beg your pardon?" He turned, a three-quarter turn, to look at her, and even in the darkness she knew that profile, fought the urge to reach out, to touch the cheekbone...possibly to slap it, or land a punch.  
  
"Arse," she said, tersely, but not without affection. "If you turn coward now, you will regret it the rest of your life." A short life: Watson would only wait as long as he'd given his word, and then....Holmes would shatter. She had seen it happen, over and again.  
  
He hesitated, clearly on the verge of turning away, giving in to fear - the great Holmes, afraid - and disappearing back into the night. She swore, tired and wet and unable to stand another loss, and moved past him, intentionally knocking into him with one shoulder so that her more solid build pushed him forward, even as she reached out and opened the door with the key she'd taken from his hand.  
  
"Go in," she said harshly. "Let him know you're alive, damn it."  
  
"Why do you care?" he asked, perplexed, curious.  
  
She was exhausted, achy, and probably once for another head cold, and this arrogant shit was questioning her motives. Giselle ground her teeth and bit back her instinctive reaction. Seconds passed, and she chose truth.  
  
"Because if you delay, he is going to eat his gun. And responsibility for his death will be square on your shoulders, no matter what justification you try to swallow."  
  
Too much, too blunt, too honest. She turned away, hearing him call "wait" but not heeding it. With luck the open door and pull of home would be enough, overriding any desire to chase her, discover what she knew, and how.  
  
When she felt safe enough to turn and look, the street was empty, the door closed. Ten minutes later, the light in 221B flicked on, and the yelling started.

#

  
Of all the things he had thought, planned, anticipated, the long journey home, it had not been to be met by a strange woman at his doorstep, had not been to be jolted by the idea that John might not be there, that John might –  
  
No. Impossible. A game, a trick, one last shot to drive him to his knees, even now that Moriarity’s web was torn down and burnt to ashes. But he took the stairs two at a time nonetheless, then paused, his heart moving blood too quickly for comfort, his limbs aching as they hadn’t all the nights he’d waited, all the days he’d traveled.  
  
He opened the door, telling himself that everything would be all right. John would yell, John might even hit him, John might, in extremis, cry. But it would be all right.  
  
The light flicked on, and John was sitting there, watching him. As though he’d been waiting. Hair trimmed to military regulation, a moustache – that was new, unexpected. A new jumper, oatmeal in color, with those ridiculous elbow patches, over grey wool slacks, his feet bare as though he’d been readying himself for bed. In his lap, his pistol, hands folded over it as though he were sitting in church.  
  
“Yeah,” John says, more an exhalation than actual words. “I thought that might be it.”  
  
“John.” Sherlock swallowed, then dove in, certain that he had the words that would explain everything.  
  
“You….arrogant, clueless, miserable arse!” John had stood up halfway through, his body held with stiff precision, his voice rising to a controlled shout. “You think you can just walk back in here oh hello John, lovely fucking weather isn’t it let’s go for Chinese?”  
  
“It’s a bit late for Chinese, but if you’re hungry-“ He knew it was the wrong thing to say, the utter absolute wrong thing, more than a bit not good, but he couldn’t help himself, any more than John could help picking up the straightback chair he had been sitting in, and hurling it at him.  
  
As the chair shattered against the wall behind where he had just been standing, Sherlock decided that the fact that John had apparently forgotten that he held his service pistol in his other hand was a very good sign.

  
#

  
Giselle realized that she was wandering aimlessly. She really should find a place to stay, maybe find a place where she could sing for her supper, if the weather changed, or where crowds were dense enough that she could lift a wallet or two. She had done everything she could do. Now it was only a matter of waiting until the phase shifted, and she went forward - and back- again.  
  
How many times had she done this, jumped to the same point in time, in another almost-identical place? How many times more? She had not thought to ask how many iterations there might be, but each one seemed to slice something out of her, leaving her less, somehow, aching and hollow.  
  
That was her only justification for doing what she did next, footsore and hungry, the head cold now firmly entrenched in her system and the barren stretch of three more weeks ahead of her.  
  
Not that it was conscious, no planned idiocy, just a vague thought and an ingrained instinct – and maybe a tinge of bad luck that just that day she would be walking down a street when the too- familiar sounds and visuals caught her, sure as any spiderweb. Just bad luck and bad timing and she should have kept walking but there was no way she could, not when it had been given to her, like this.  
  
She blended with the crowd, but unlike them, she watched not the tarp-covered body or the flurry of technicians, but the figure standing off to the side, conferring with another man and a dark-skinned woman.  
  
"Oh, hello," Giselle said, her throat closing around the words. "Hello." He looked tired, stressed, but in control of his scene, directing events. Whatever DI Lestrade had been put through in the aftermath of Holmes’ idiocy, he had clawed his way back. She almost smiled, almost relieved, until he turned as though drawn by her attention, and scanned the crowd. Not untouched by events, no. His face too haunted, too drawn.  
  
And then, impossibly, he saw her, his eyes narrowing, his face drawn into sharper lines, his instincts kicking in when they should never have been woken.  
  
She swallowed, swamped by grief, and turned, walking away at a measured pace so as not to draw attention. He was alive. He existed, and soon, with luck and kind fate, he would get a phone call that might ease some of his pain. It had to be enough.  
  
Giselle sneezed, and mentally counted the coins in her pocket. Enough for some soup and coffee, at least. And then shelter, and she needed to lay low, for the remainder of her days. No more foolishness.

 

#

 

 

It had taken him nearly half an hour after his phone rang for Lestrade to wrap his mind around it.  He got through the rest of the day with what he hoped was a decent amount of calm, then shed his official persona and headed directly to 221 Baker Street. 

By the time he walked into the flat, he was half-certain he was hallucinating. Or John was pulling an ill-advised and uncharacteristic prank. "Fuck me."  

"A less erudite but considerably less violent reaction than John," Sherlock noted, and it took firsthand knowledge of the man to read the tension in his pose and expression, the hesitant need for reassurance.

"Oh I may knock you sideways yet," Greg told him. "Don't press your luck." 

It took several hours, a considerable amount of good Irish, and takeaway curry before the story came out, in as much detail as they could drag out of Sherlock. He remained stubbornly silent on certain matters, despite John's best efforts.

"You have no need to know, John. They are not for recounting on your blog."   

"I saw her," he said. "This morning. At a crime scene.  I noticed her because.."

"Why?"

"Because she was watching me, not the action. Intently, almost...." He frowned, trying to remember the exact feeling. "Like she knew me, and hasn't ever expected to see me again."

"Interesting,"  Sherlock said. "A strange woman out of nowhere, whom none of us know, who seems to know about us? Oh I must meet her."

"And how do you plan to do that, Sherlock?" John looked at his flatmate, the lost time still between them, but this was familiar ground. "Not that I would mind - whoever she is, we owe her our thanks" - clearly Sherlock hadn't thought of that at all - "but it's not as though we've even a name or connection to start from."

"On the contrary," Sherlock said with a touch of his old insolence. "We have exactly the bait that she cannot resist."

Lestrade's lips twitched. "Us."

"Precisely."

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How it was all SUPPOSED to end...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate hate hate abandoning stories. So here's how the plot plays out, as best I could work it....

As Sherlock predicted, the three of them together, in public, was impossible to resist.  Giselle  _had_ to see them together, was drawn too close, and they were waiting for her.

( _how?  Damned if I know_ )

She's tired, exhausted, and weirdly emotional.  Sherlock deducts that she is connected to them somehow... but no, not them.  Alternates of them.

John starts to say that's impossible, but at this point he's not sure what  _is_ impossible.

Sherlock's right.  Giselle comes from a different universe, a linked one, one of many.  In each of them, the three of them exist, with differences.  Gender changes.  Race changes.  Slight relationship changes.  But in the first one, the one she comes from... Sherlock returned too late.  Watson died.  And in despair, she cast out a plea to the universe - "let me change this!"

She has one chance, in every universe.  

"But why?" Sherlock asks.  "What were we, to you?"

And then Lestrade speaks.  "She's me.  Aren't you?"

She nods.

In her universe, "Shay" Holmes is her best friend.  John Watson was Shay's lover.  And she failed them both, because she couldn't  _believe_ enough for them both, to keep John alive until Shay retuned.  There's nothing left in her world.  

And now it's time for her to go.  There are other shifts, other attempts to make, and the window is closing.

"How far will you go?" John asks.  "How many universes until your hands feel clean?  Will they, ever?"

"How far can you go?" Sherlock asks.  "Realistically, every universe sifts you further away from where you were, the less likely it is that you will be able to succeed.  Is that what you want, for the rest of your existence?  Mathmatically decreasing odds of success?"

Greg just looks at her - knowing her pain as well as his own, knowing that she's as alone as he was.  And he either says "stay," or he doesn't ( _both ways seemed to veer into pathos, and didn't feel right_ ).

 

...what does she do?  Be damned if I know.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Brit-picked by the glorious [Kari](http://karisperring.com/). 
> 
> This story started as a riff off a "why is all the genderswap stuff about sex?" question from a friend, and kind of...grew. Ooops? (I have whinged at my friend about this, yes.) The plan is to update every week. You know what occasionally happens to plans...


End file.
